Any good arguments in favor of free will?

[JohnCR]

I've been a happy atheist since I was 15, but I recently discovered determinism and the idea that we have no real free will. This disturbs me more than there being no afterlife, no purpose, and no God(s). The notion that we cannot change the future seems to bring new meaning to the word futility. It implies that laws and courts don't punish people for choices they make but for a state of being. However, those who make and carry out the laws also cannot help themselves because they had no free will either. Democracy seems pointless now. What does it matter if 100 million people vote if none of them were actually able to change the outcome of the election? Even now, as I am posting this, I am not choosing to do so. Either I will get past this disturbing concept or I won't. I have no real control in the outcome, and that is philosophically maddening to me.

I think I would be happier if I believed in free will again, but I have yet to hear any good arguments in favor of it. However, I don't want to delude myself into believing something that is false either. Those of you who agree with me and don't believe in free will, are you not bothered by having to pretend that it exists? Those who disagree with me, what are your arguments for free will?

[Whitney]

I don't personally think we know enough about the universe to know that free will is an illusion.


btw, i think there is another thread on this topic but I forgot what it was called; perhaps someone else will link to it.

[The Magic Pudding]

I don't think determinism is very helpful, it is just too big picture.
A omniscient being, (not necessarily a creator) should be able to predict your birth, that you'd kick your toe and what you'd say about it.
I don't know any omniscient beings, no one knows what you are going to do, so just do your best.

Here are some related posts.
http://www.google.com.au/search?q=free+ ... mages&tbs=

It implies that laws and courts don't punish people for choices they make but for a state of being. However, those who make and carry out the laws also cannot help themselves because they had no free will either.

People do make choices, a burglar is punished and the choices of potential burglars are effected.
It's not like I want to punish the weather as lesson to other weather.

[JohnCR]

I don't think determinism is very helpful, it is just too big picture.
A omniscient being, (not necessarily a creator) should be able to predict your birth, that you'd kick your toe and what you'd say about it.
I don't know any omniscient beings, no one knows what you are going to do, so just do your best.

Here are some related posts.
http://www.google.com.au/search?q=free+ ... mages&tbs=

It implies that laws and courts don't punish people for choices they make but for a state of being. However, those who make and carry out the laws also cannot help themselves because they had no free will either.

People do make choices, a burglar is punished and the choices of potential burglars are effected.
It's not like I want to punish the weather as lesson to other weather.

That's the thing, I don't think people do make choices, at least not free choices. I think there is only one choice people are capable of making in any given situation.

How is determinism not helpful? I'm not a complete determinist. I think quantum uncertainty gives us enough reason to doubt cause and effect on the molecular level, BUT I don't think that uncertainty translates into free will for humans.

I read the previous discussion. It didn't seem very helpful to be honest.

[dloubet]

As far as we can tell, quantum events such as atomic decay are utterly Random. That's Random with a capital R. They are causeless.

This occurs in a universe that otherwise appears to operate according to strict, deterministic, physical law.

It is the universe's ability to accommodate random input that keeps it from being deterministic.

This implies that the future is not written in stone. The Random input to the clockwork universe means the future is open and not determined.

We may still be robots made of meat, devoid of free will, but at least our actions actually make a difference.

[ablprop]

The essence of science is prediction -

snickelwort!

If you can't predict what's coming next . . .

pusilanimous!

then you have no standing to claim that it is pre-determined.

aardvark!

Try this. Ask yourself, "how would the universe be different if I did have free will?" If you can't find a single difference, then such a difference doesn't exist.

It's a very Einsteinian way of thinking. If no experiment can detect the ether, then there is no ether. If you can't detect a difference between gravity and acceleration, then there is no difference. If you can't detect the difference between free will and lack of free will, then there is no distinction.

Are you constrained? Then break your constraints! Sure, maybe that action was pre-determined, but such knowledge is far, far beyond our grasp, so it is EXACTLY as if you're making up as you go. We can't even predict the weather tomorrow with 100% accuracy, let alone predict what crazy thought will come from even a single human mind.

Rumplestiltskin!

Waponi Woo!

Walla Walla, Washington!

We're party crashers in this crazy universe, kids pretending to be adults. Enjoy the ride!

[The Magic Pudding]

snickelwort!
pusilanimous!
aardvark!
Rumplestiltskin!
Waponi Woo!
Walla Walla, Washington!

Words of wisdom  

[hackenslash]

I've been a happy atheist since I was 15, but I recently discovered determinism and the idea that we have no real free will. This disturbs me more than there being no afterlife, no purpose, and no God(s). The notion that we cannot change the future seems to bring new meaning to the word futility. It implies that laws and courts don't punish people for choices they make but for a state of being. However, those who make and carry out the laws also cannot help themselves because they had no free will either. Democracy seems pointless now. What does it matter if 100 million people vote if none of them were actually able to change the outcome of the election? Even now, as I am posting this, I am not choosing to do so. Either I will get past this disturbing concept or I won't. I have no real control in the outcome, and that is philosophically maddening to me.

Hi, John. You have touched upon one of the great quandaries in thought, and one that has had many great thinkers wrestling with themselves. Perhaps I can allay some of your fears, but it may be apposite to give some thought to just what is meant by free will.

'Will' is the ability to choose between alternatives. Free will is, therefore, the ability to choose unconstrained between alternatives. This is an important distinction to be made, for reasons that should become clear in what follows.

Now, a deterministic universe would indeed cause problems for free will, but worse than that, it causes problems for will, free or otherwise. Thankfully, determinism, at least in the Laplacian sense (it was Pierre-Simon Laplce who is credited with the assertion that, given sufficient knowledge of the position and velocity of every particle in the universe at any one time, we could predict with certainty the positions and velocities of those particles at any future time), is ruled out. Firstly, quantum mechanics, and specifically Heisenberg's Uncertainty Principle, demonstrate that such knowledge cannot be attained. Indeed, the best models we have for quantum phenomena at the moment suggest that these parameters do not actually have values until observed, which is to say that any particle has no position or velocity until such time as its wavefunction is collapsed, the wavefunction essentially being a probabilistic treatment of given values for those parameters. Worse still, the more accurately we know one, the less accurately we can know the other.

There are other interesting phenomena that arise from QM concerning determinism, and one of them should be treated here, because it addresses why the universe seems deterministic. That phenomenon is, of course, radionuclide decay. Given an individual atom of a radioactive nuclide, it cannot be predicted when it will decay. This event is totally random which, in this context, simply means that its decay is statistically independent. Statistical independence is a very important principle to understand, as it is the most common treatment of 'random' in a scientific context. What it actually means is that an event A occuring at time t is equiprobable with occuring at any other time. There are other, related, definitions of random that are important to note here. The most important alternative treatment is 'containing variables too numerous for us to be able to make categorical predictions. It's important to note in what context the word is being used in any given instance, because it goes to the heart of what we actually understand.

Getting back to the radionuclide decay, we cannot say when a particular atom will decay, but when dealing with macroscopic agglomerations of said atoms, we can predict probabilistically how they will decay. We can say, for example, that a given sample will have decayed by 50% in a given span of time. We term this the half-life, and it follows a pattern that can be predicted with absolute accuracy, which is why we can use it for dating things, by measuring the ratio of parent to daughter isotopes. If you're interested, there's a really excellent article by the world-famous Calilasseia HERE, in which he delivers an exposé of radiometric dating and how we know what we know.

The important thing to note here is that this gives us a kind of semi-determinism, but the question is, is our will affected by this level of determinism?

There's another point to be made about the relationship between QM and determinism, in the form of a test of determinism. I'll allow the excellent and knowledgable susu.exp to explain:

Now, quantum physics has provided us with a means of testing determinism. To give an explanation let´s look at the Pauli principle first: two electrons in an orbital can not have the same spin number. One must have 1/2 and one -1/2. If we measure the spin in one direction they always come out different. So if we measure s1 in the x direction we know that s2 in the x direction is -1/2.
Now, let´s assume that at a time t these numbers would be fixed, so our electrons have spin numbers for 3 directions. Then we know that they must differ in each of them, so we either have (+,+,+) and (-,-,-) or (+,+,-) and (-,-,+) (for any sequence of y,x, and z direction). Now, we can think about the results we should obtain if we measure the spin number in any two directions. If the first "programming" is correct we will always find them differing. If the second one is correct, they will differ in 5/9 of the cases. Assuming that there is some program at work, but allowing for both types to be around, we will have them differing in at least 5/9 of the cases. So the proportion of differing measurements >=5/9: This is the Bell inequality and there are variations on this (you don´t have to use the spin of electrons, there are other similar options). Since the late 1970s experiments of this type have been carried out and they all show violations of the inequality. This means that there is no such "program" at work and this implies that whether the electrons comes out as +,- or -,+ when we measure them in the same direction is not only unknown to us before we measure them, but also to the electrons itself. The inderterminism is as real as it gets, because a prediction of determinism is the inequality given above and the violations falsify it.

http://www.rationalskepticism.org/gener ... ml#p682847

Moving on, it is at least reasonably clear that our neural processes, through which we make our decisions, are at least somewhat governed by quantum processes, not least because our neural processes are electrochemical in nature, and electrons are similarly subject to quantum indeterminacy. So, do we have will? I would say almost certainly. Do we have free will? That's a different question, and one that has a conclusion that may surprise you.

Cali again

In short, I think that free will is an illusion, at least to the degree that our choices are entirely unconstrained, but I do think that we have will, with at least some freedom to choose, even if that freedom is somewhat curtailed by things we aren't even aware of, such as the above study illustrates.

I think I would be happier if I believed in free will again, but I have yet to hear any good arguments in favor of it.

I hope I've provided a good argument for at least some degree of free will, or at least against a deterministic universe. It should be noted that free will, while ruled out by determinism, is not actually ruled in by non-determinism

However, I don't want to delude myself into believing something that is false either.

TBH, I think you're overworrying at it. In reality, the question of whether or not we possess and freedom of will at all is quite probably unfalsifiable and unanswerable. All we can say for certain is that the universe is definitely not deterministic, so it looks as if we have some freedom of will.

[Stevil]

This disturbs me more than there being no afterlife, no purpose, and no God(s).

Are you sure you are an Atheist?
How can you find it disturbing that there are no gods?
Why do you desire a purpose? How come you find it disturbing that there isn't a predefined purpose for you?
Why do you desire a mythical afterlife? How does it disturb you that there isn't one?

BTW I believe there is no such thing as complete free will. You base your decisions on your experiences and your knowledge and your emotions and physical state. Your decisions aren't simply random. You don't have a soul that is independant of everything, which carries around a moral (values) structure to which your decisions are based.

[Wilson]

Of course we have free will.  You can decide to turn right, or turn left.  

But that's true only in the macro sense.  At the quantum level it's all deterministic.  (That depends on your definition of determinism.  If predictability is part of your definition, that doesn't seem to be the case, due to quantum uncertainty.)  So in a theoretical and intellectual sense, we don't have free will - but of course each of us can make his or her own decisions.

If you think of us human beings as relatively independent entities, we have free will - absolutely.  If you think of us human beings as colonies of trillions of cells, we don't.  For practical purposes, we do have free will.  Only a god or a computer bigger than the universe could collect the data and do the calculations to predict the future, even if quantum uncertainty turned out to be understandable to such a god or computer.  So don't sweat it.

[hackenslash]

But that's true only in the macro sense.  At the quantum level it's all deterministic.

Err, no. It's precisely at the quantum level that determinism is ruled out. Perhaps you didn't read the post above, or the posts that I linked to in that post.

[penfold]

Personally I think the debate is rather overplayed. We simply could not operate without a notion of free will. No matter how much one may intellectually be a determinist, that is not how we experience the world. So why worry overmuch about it?

I would also add that there is a third category of systems, those which are deterministic but non-periodic (ie deterministic but necessarily unpredictable) - http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chaos_theory

[Sophus]

Of course we have free will. You can decide to turn right, or turn left.

I've never understood the "of course we have freewill" assertion. Freewill is not simply whether or not you can choose to turn left or right or anything it's the question of how much control you have over your decision making; your will.

Science seems to be showing is an illusion. Particularly this experiment.

First, they hooked up subjects to a functional MRI machine that recorded activity in various parts of the brain.  Then the subjects were presented with a computer screen on which a letter of the alphabet was flashed; these images changed every half second.  They also had two buttons, one under the index finger of each hand.

The subjects were asked to press a button with either hand, and also to remember the letter that was on the screen at the moment when they decided which button to press.  (They indicated this letter by pressing another button.)  Button presses took place about every 22 seconds, and left and right buttons were pressed with equal frequency. At the same time, the MRI showed the location of brain activity, which could be correlated with which button was subsequently pressed.

Here’s the surprising result: the brain activity that predicted which button would be pressed began a full seven seconds before the subject was conscious of his decision to press the left or right button. The authors note, too, that there is a delay of three seconds before the MRI records neural activity since the machine detects blood oxygenation.  Taking this into account, neuronal activity predicting which button would be pressed began about ten seconds before a conscious decision was made.

The earliest brain activity occurred in the frontopolar cortex (FPC) and subsequently moved into the parietal cortex, areas different from the SMA where Libet detected activity. Curiously, the brain activity determining when the button would be pushed was detectableâ€"5 seconds beforehandâ€"in the SMA, but the activity reflecting which button would be pushed occurred in the FPC. As the authors note, “there appears to be a double dissociation in the very early stages between brain regions shaping the specific outcome of the motor decision and brain regions determining the timing of a motor decision.”

The authors conclude:

Taken together, the two specific regions in the frontal and parietal cortex of the human brain had considerable information that predicted the outcome of a motor decision the subject had not yet consciously made.  . . Thus, a network of high-level control areas can begin to shape an upcoming decision long before it enters awareness.

This is dry scientific prose, but what it implies is that our decisionsâ€"certainly in the case of which button to pushâ€"appear to be made long before we’re conscious of making them.

[hackenslash]

I've never understood the "of course we have freewill" assertion.

I always liked Hitch's treatment of it. 'Of course we have free will; we have no choice!'

[Wilson]

Err, no. It's precisely at the quantum level that determinism is ruled out. Perhaps you didn't read the post above, or the posts that I linked to in that post.

Perhaps you didn't read the rest of that paragraph.  Some definitions of determinism don't imply predictability, just that each action is caused by preceding actions.  Besides, who knows whether there may be some underlying reality to quantum uncertainty that IS predictable, were it understood.  But it's not an important point; everything that an animal decides is the result of subatomic forces he has no control over, ultimately.  That's the important point.